


All the Lights and Decorations Put Up in Anticipation

by holbytlanna



Series: Advent Calendar 2020 [3]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Creepy Murdoc, Decorating for Christmas, Gen, Giving Mac shit, Hanging, Hurt Mac, Hurt/Comfort, Team Bonding, Team as Family, Whump, die hard is a christmas movie, fight me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:26:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28025451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holbytlanna/pseuds/holbytlanna
Summary: Christmas decorations | Putting them up together | Using them to tie someone up/for tortureThe Team decorates the house for Christmas. They have an unwelcome visitor.
Series: Advent Calendar 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2042773
Comments: 10
Kudos: 35





	All the Lights and Decorations Put Up in Anticipation

Decorating the MacGyver-Bozer house for Christmas was an all-hands-on-deck experience. It took all morning to get the inside done. The house wasn’t huge, but there were a lot of decorations that needed to be stuffed into it. 

Bozer, wearing the world’s most garish Christmas socks, was putting ornaments on the tree. The one that actually looked like a Christmas tree, not the hubcap one in the hallway. Riley laughed at him while she DJ’ed. 

“Bozer, one of them is green and red argyle, and the other is fuzzy with Santas on it. You usually have better fashion sense. What happened?”

“Okay, Miss ‘I don’t really do Christmas but know every word to Mr. Grinch,’ I see how it is. You’re just gonna be a Scrooge and hate on my socks. It’s cool, it’s cool, but you better watch out. Somebody might just get some coal in her stocking this year.”

“Oh please,” Riley scoffed. “Nobody over the age of eight believes in Santa, Boze, I hardly think I’m gonna get coal.”

Jack, walking by holding a stack of Christmas movies (with Die Hard placed prominently at the top), said “Oh, you might wanna rethink that hypothesis, Ri. Not even Mac can disprove Santa’s existence.”

Riley looked shocked as Bozer chuckled. “Mac,” she called down the hall to where Mac was supposed to be hanging tinsel. “Is that true? You still believe in Santa?”

There was no answer. 

“Mac?” Jack called out, making his way over to the hall in time to hear a timid “Uhh… A little help?”

Mac had somehow managed to tie himself up in the tinsel garland. After laughing for a solid minute at their helpless friend, who looked on, slightly miffed, the team set about freeing Mac from his own ineptitude. 

“In answer to your question, yes. I am a grown man who cannot disprove the existence of Santa. I can’t prove he does exist, but I can’t prove he doesn’t. However,” he said with a pointed look at Bozer, “I can tell you that it’s unlikely anyone will put coal in your stocking,  _ right Bozer _ ?”

The mocking tension was broken by a loud thump and Jack cursing violently. He had dropped a cast-iron decoration onto his foot.

The whole morning was filled with interactions just like that one. After a break for lunch, they started on the outside. Bozer and Riley were working on lawn ornaments when they discovered that something was missing a light. 

“We’re gonna head to the store, find another light. Need anything?” Bozer called up to Mac and Jack, hanging lights from the roof.

“Nah, unless you want to pick up some more staples for the staple gun. We’re running low on the one-inch.”

Bozer and Riley drove off, and Mac and Jack fell into their usual talk, about work, about Die Hard (Mac had spent the first Christmas he had known Jack trying to argue that Die Hard wasn’t a Christmas movie. Not because he didn’t think it was, but because he wanted to annoy his Overwatch, who got very defensive over “the best Christmas movie ever made”). 

Jack climbed down the ladder just before Mac did. And as Mac went around to the far side of the yard, Jack stayed to admire their festive handiwork. Maybe it was the banter that distracted him, maybe it was the fact that he felt safe at Mac’s house. Whatever it was, Jack didn’t hear footsteps creeping up behind him. He didn’t know anything was wrong until he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head, and he fell, out like a light without being able to so much as yell to warn Mac.

—————

Mac walked over to the other end of the yard to see if the lights there were on right. He stopped in his tracks as he heard a crack, and a dull thud of a body hitting the ground (a sound he was unfortunately very familiar with).

“Jack!” he called out, running back, and suddenly found some kind of cording at his throat. He grappled with it, but his hands stilled as he heard a gun cock.

“Now, now, leave that be, MacGyver.” Murdoc was standing over Jack’s still body, holding in one hand a candy cane-shaped lawn ornament that must have been what he used to take out Jack, and in the other, the end of a lasso of string-lights. The other end of which was around Mac’s neck. Not tight enough to choke. Just a warning. 

Throwing aside the candy cane, Murdoc used the string to pull Mac closer to him. “I see you’re getting into the Christmas spirit,” Murdoc smiled. “And really, the house does look lovely. You all have done a great job. And I hate to interrupt before you’ve finished, but the opportunity was there. And I just… I just  _ had  _ to take it.” He nudged Jack’s body with his foot. Mac seethed.

“What the hell do you want?”

Murdoc laughed, sending revulsion skittering down Mac’s spine. “What do I want? What do I  _ always  _ want, Boy Genius? I want you.”

It took no time at all for Murdoc to tie Mac up completely in Christmas lights. All he had to do to get Mac to comply was point the gun at Jack. “He’s so still, lying there. It’d be hard to miss. Now  _ behave, _ or I’ll shoot your dear attack dog.”

The final result was Mac standing still, with the string of lights wrapping tightly up his body from his ankles to his throat. He couldn’t move his hands, and he couldn’t run. Not that he would, until Bozer and Riley came back. Mac knew the psychopath wouldn’t hesitate to shoot Jack, even if he might hesitate to shoot Mac himself.

Murdoc circled around him, admiring his handiwork. He got close to Mac’s face, and he avoided making eye contact. 

“Well, you’re no fun,” Murdoc pouted, taking one of the large bulbs in his gloved fingers and shattering it. It fell against Mac’s skin, sharp but not yet cutting into him. A few more bulbs popped, and Murdoc stepped back. He pulled on the end of the lights he still held, chuckling sardonically as it tightened around Mac’s throat. It drew the jagged edges of the shattered glass into the delicate skin of his neck, eliciting a hiss and a few drops of blood.

“That’s better,” Murdoc said as he let the line go slack. Mac was thinking overtime. His neighbours likely couldn’t see what was happening since they were around the back of the house, but maybe they would hear him if he shouted. But would they do anything? They all knew perfectly well that weird noises were very common for the MacGyver-Bozer house, they might not think anything of it. He hoped Riley and Bozer would come home soon.

Murdoc had laid eyes on the staple gun Mac and Jack had been using to secure the lights, and his dark eyes lit up in fiendish glee. Mac grimaced as his captor picked up the tool and checked the staples inside it.

“What in the world were you doing with this that left it down to only four staples, MacGyver? Or maybe that’s where dear Wilt and Riley have gone off to, to fetch some more. No matter. Four is enough.”

He brought the business end of the tool up to Mac’s arm, and with a  _ sss-pop! _ sound, fired a staple into his bicep. Mac yelped from the pain, but it dulled quickly as Murdoc took away the gun and inspected the damage. “Oh,  _ very  _ nice.” 

The one-inch steel staples met little resistance firing into Mac’s body. The next one went into his right pec. Mac grit his teeth against another yell, knowing it would just give Murdoc even more satisfaction. 

Two down, two to go. Mac was finding himself very grateful that they had used only one-inch staples for the lights, instead of the two-inch he had considered. 

A staple in his right side between his ribs had him unable to bite down on his cry of pain. The steel definitely grazed bone, and Mac almost fell over. Murdoc laughed as he held Mac steady.

The last one  _ sss-pop! _ ed into the meat of his left thigh, nearly symmetrical to the place on his right thigh Mac had stabbed himself with scissors a while back.

The sound of Bozer’s car pulling up into the driveway was the most beautiful sound Mac had ever heard. He had a moment to think he was saved, that everything would be alright. But then he saw the look in Murdoc’s eyes. A dark, twisted glee that spelled bad news for a certain tied-up Mac.  _ This can’t be good. _

Mac would never know how Murdoc did it, but somehow, he fastened the end of the light string to the roof, dangling Mac nearly half a foot off the ground. From his throat. He was hanging him.

He couldn’t thrash around, couldn’t free his hands. He was still tied up tightly, with no hope of freeing himself.  _ Can’t breathe, can’t breathe…  _ He could feel the broken lights at his neck digging hard into his throat, and around the desperate voice in his head screaming for air, he wondered faintly if the glass would hit something important in his throat and kill him before he could suffocate. 

_ Can’t breathe, I need air, it’s been too long, I can’t breathe! _

The world was going fuzzy around him, dark and dim.  _ I can’t breathe!  _ He hated not being able to breathe. 

He heard his heartbeat pounding in his ears, blocking out all other sound. He didn’t hear Murdoc as he left with a parting “Merry Christmas, MacGyver!” He didn’t hear Riley and Bozer running toward him, calling his name.

His eyes rolled closed as the world fuzzed out. The last thing he knew was the feeling of hands on him, lifting him gently down.

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone's fine. Bozer and Riley get to Mac in time, and Jack wakes up royally pissed :)


End file.
